While industry and the FDA may be treading carefully when it comes to social media, consumers are not, says former FDA’s Associate Commissioner for External Relations, Peter Pitts. “People are searching for healthcare information online,” he says. “They are like animals on the hunt. They go where the information scent is the strongest.”

 

According to Pitts, who heads the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest in New York, the potential in this rapidly-evolving domain is enormous. “Today, unquestionably, healthcare begins at ‘search’,” he says.

 

Nevertheless, regulations, angst about adverse events and off-label conversations, concern about correcting misinformation, and responsibility for what he calls “this new, thrilling, and chilling, and uncontrollable thing called user-generated content” has the industry largely frozen in place. “When it comes to 21st century communications, consumer empowerment is both a blessing and a curse,” says Pitts, “because you can’t control it like advertising.”